When the federal government officially shut down on October 1, 2025, a wave of confusion and concern swept through Washington’s corridors. But for many furloughed workers at the Department of Education, the turmoil took on an unexpected—and deeply personal—twist. Several employees discovered that their automatic out-of-office email replies had been changed, without their knowledge or consent, to blame Senate Democrats for the shutdown. The altered messages, which appeared to come from the employees themselves, left many feeling violated and worried about the potential impact on their reputations and careers.
According to reporting from CNN, four current Department of Education staffers described the move as both disturbing and a potential violation of their rights. “It is compelled speech and feels like a setup,” one employee told CNN, echoing the sentiment of others who said they felt “completely violated and concerned.” Another worker told Wired, “None of us consented to this. And it’s written in the first-person, as if I’m the one conveying this message, and I’m not. I don’t agree with it. I don’t think it’s ethical or legal. I think it violates the Hatch Act.”
The language of the changed out-of-office reply was strikingly partisan. “Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.” This message, which appeared in the inboxes of those reaching out to furloughed Education Department employees, was far from the neutral, generic responses typically used during past shutdowns.
Some employees tried to change their messages back to a standard, nonpartisan version—only to find that their attempts were undone, and the partisan message reinstated. “I have seen articles about agencies providing ‘suggested’ language, but what’s happening here is absolutely worse and scary,” one worker told CNN, highlighting the anxiety and helplessness felt by many caught up in the situation.
The Department of Education was not alone in this approach. The Department of Health and Human Services, according to its director of communications, instructed employees to use out-of-office messages that “reflect the truth: Democrats have shut the government down.” At the Small Business Administration, leadership sent employees similar politically charged language to use in their automatic replies. Even the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the State Department adopted partisan messaging on their homepages, with HUD’s website declaring, “Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s homepage stated, “The Trump Administration is working to reopen the government for the American people. Mission-critical activities of CDC will continue during the Democrat-led government shutdown.”
The White House itself was not exempt. When the Daily Mail reached out for comment, it received an automatic reply stating, “Due to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays. As you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open.” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson later told the Daily Mail, “It’s an objective fact that Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown, the Trump Administration is simply sharing the truth with the American people.”
These moves have sparked a heated debate over the legality and ethics of using official government communications to assign political blame. The Hatch Act, a federal law designed to ensure that government employees perform their duties in a nonpartisan manner, is at the center of the controversy. The law is intended, as the Office of the Special Counsel explains, to “protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace.”
Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, told CNN that several laws may have been violated by the directive—or by the Department of Education sending out automatic emails without employees’ consent. “If you coerce someone to send a message, let’s just say they say, ‘You need to send a message blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, or you get fired,’ I think that’s a violation,” he explained. “But then let’s go to the next step and say, well, instead of doing that, they just seize control of your email, because you’re out of the office, and you’re not allowed to go in your email, and they put out an email with your name on it, isn’t that coercion? I think that’s coercion.”
Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, has filed complaints against the Small Business Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, alleging that the partisan messages on their homepages violate the Hatch Act. The group’s action underscores the growing concern among government watchdogs and employees alike that the boundaries of acceptable government communication are being tested—if not outright crossed.
Yet, the Trump administration and its defenders argue that there is precedent for such communications. A White House official pointed out to the Daily Mail that both the Obama and Biden administrations had used official statements and press releases to assign blame to Republicans during previous shutdowns. “The Biden and Obama administrations repeatedly assigned partisan blame on Republicans in official fact sheets, press releases and statements, as outlined by many examples,” the official said. They also cited a September 2024 ruling by the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, which found that Biden’s Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona did not violate the Hatch Act by sending an email to federal student loan borrowers referencing Republicans.
Legal experts are divided. Andrew Cherkasky, co-founder of Golden Law, told Fox News, “The law is intended to prohibit government officials from using their official authority to interfere with, or affect elections. The President of the United States and his agents under his authority have an unquestionable constitutional right to speak directly to the American people about what is happening in their government and who is responsible for it.”
Still, for the federal workers whose names were attached to messages they did not write or approve, the experience has been unsettling. The controversy raises important questions about the limits of political messaging in government communications and the rights of employees to control their own professional reputations. As the government shutdown drags on, the debate over these out-of-office emails has become a flashpoint in the larger battle over partisanship and transparency in Washington.
Whether these actions ultimately constitute a violation of the Hatch Act or other federal statutes may be decided in the courts or by oversight agencies. But for now, the episode stands as a stark reminder of how even the most mundane aspects of government bureaucracy—like an automatic email reply—can become battlegrounds in America’s ongoing political wars.
